by Mudrooroo
“Oh, ordinary people, them that like work and that.”
“You mean decent people, I presume.” He consults the file again. “Your probation officer and the detective both state that you had in your room a large collection of lurid paper-backs — crime stories and so forth. Do you like reading this type of literature?”
“Before, I used to think they were terrif. But now they bore me. I don’t read anything now.”
“You frequent a certain milk-bar, I understand.”
“Only place I could go after the camp, sir. It was tough there, always drinking and fighting. But at the milk-bar I could listen to the juke-box and talk.”
“I understand that a certain class of youth known as ‘bodgies’ gather there. Do you call yourself a bodgie?”
I try to-find an answer to that one.
“Do you?”
“No . . . sir.”
“What do you call yourself?”
“A progressive dresser, I guess, sir.”
“Oh, is there a difference?”
“I think so, sir. I mean. . . .”
“Perhaps the difference is that a bodgie carries a bike chain and a so-called progressive dresser carries a knife and cosh.”
The Magistrate looks pointedly at the exhibits. It’s a joke, and hollow laughter echoes through the court. “You may step down now. The Court will be in recess for ten minutes. Mr Robinson, will you come into my chambers, please.”
Seventeen, seventeen, graduated and got that twist. Juke-box king ain’t no square. Seventeen and second trial. . . .
The Magistrate returns.
“I have discussed the case with the defendant’s probation officer and can see no mitigating circumstances. So far as I can make out there are no other matters to be taken into consideration and I feel it my duty to commit this youth to a further term of imprisonment. I sincerely hope it will be a lesson to him and to others.”
He turns his pale blank face to the defendant. “I sentence you to eighteen months imprisonment with hard labour. While in the place of detention you will be given a psychological examination and treated if necessary.”
Shrug it off, man. Big present. Eighteen lovely months, all found and plenty of good company. Old school mates complete with old school ties. . . . “Boys, boys, avoid the occasion of sin. Above all bad company!” Eighteen lovely, lousy months ... all lost. May the dirty bastards burn in hell.
The defendant looks up as they take him outside. Racing clouds pile up over the last small patch of sky. He goes to the lavatory and vomits. His guardian angel offers him a cigarette. . . .
Someone claps me on the back.
“Hi, man!”
“Hi, man!” I parrot back. “How’re you going?”
“Still out, anyway,” he says.
I turn and see that it is Jeff, my prison-redeemed friend.
“Hi, man,” I say again. “How’s that swell big doll of yours?”
“She won’t have a bar of me,” he says. “She wants big money now.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. They get that way.”
“But I want her like hell,” he says.
“So what? You’ve got nothing coming to you. Nothing to confess.”
He looks away. “I want her like hell.”
“Yeah. Like leaves. Like spring.”
“Eh, man?”
“Like hell. Like fire. Like life.”
“Hey! You all right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, sure. You want this big doll. She wants big money. You ain’t got her. You ain’t got big money. So what?”
He sits down beside me, takes a rum bottle from his hip pocket and divides the remains of the grog into two cups.
“I don’t know what to do, man,” he says. “All the things we argued about in jail, God or no God. Christ- God, or phoney, or plain duped. Remember?”
“Yeah.” I take a swig of the rum and look at the wine stain on the wall. “So what?”
“You’ve got more brains than me,” he says. “More than anyone I get a chance of talking to. If you were dinkum — if you still reckon it’s just a yam they put over us so they can keep on top. . . .”
I look at him. That’s what he wants me to tell him because he wants this big doll and he wants to get hold of the money to pay for her.
I toss off the last of the rum and get up from the chair.
“You work that out for yourself. I got problems of my own.”
“You mean you’ve changed your mind? You’re going straight?”
I say nothing.
“I reckoned you might of had something once,” he says. “But I guess you’re just scared like the rest of us.”
“Who said I was scared?”
“Or maybe reformed,” he says sadly.
“Like hell,” I say.
twelve
There's no more grog so we wander over to the counter, order a coke, and sit down at our table again. “Had any fun since?” Jeff asks.
“No,” I say. “The usual drag. I ran into a University mob, thought they might be O.K. but they were a worse fake than the bodgie gang — only rich enough to get away with it.”
“Got any ideas?” he asks.
“Plenty,” I lie. “Getting out of this city for a start. It gives me the shits.”
“Me too,” he says. “I’d like to get out and forget about this doll, but I don’t know where. They reckon there’s some work going in the wheatbelt over harvest, but I don’t know about those parts.”
I ask him where exactly and he says my home town. “Yeah,” I say. “It’d be swell to do a job there. Just swell.”
“You’d know a few people there, I suppose?” “Sure,” I say. “Kindest, best meaning folks in the world, and all those lovely kids who bashed me up at school. Guess they’ll be big men now. Big dumb farmers with dials like sheep and bellies full of wheat.” I feel the old hate rise up in me like a fanned fire.
“Kicked me out for my own good at nine years old. Set my feet firmly on the path to hell. Yeah, sure. I think the world of that little town and its folks with their big reputation for hospitality. Open house. Anything we got is yours, boy. Help yourself. They’d be tickled pink to welcome me back.”
“Well, I guess that’s out,” Jeff says. “I thought if I’d found a mate I might have had a stab at it.”
“You’ve found one,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“I often thought about going back to do a job there,” I tell him. “Why not tonight?”
“You’re crazy,” he says. “It’s about a hundred miles.”
“Ninety eight. What’s that in a flash new car?”
“Gee,” he says. “You must be even drunker than you look.”
“Come on, let’s go.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?” I laugh. “Waiting for Godot?”
“Who?”
“Friend of mine,” I say. “Literary acquaintance.”
“We’d have to plan a thing like that real carefully,” Jeff says.
“Listen man,” I tell him, dropping my voice. “I had this thing planned in detail the last eighteen months. It was just a matter of choosing the time. All we need is a torch and a couple of tools.”
“Sure,” he says. “Except only a flash car.”
“Little thing like that’s no problem.”
“I said I’d never come at that again. Not after last time.”
“Look,” I say. “I’m not pushing you into this. You don’t want to come at it, O.K. But that last car job you did was a moron act. You deserved what was coming to you.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “I made a silly mistake.”
I get to my feet again. “O.K., man. Be seeing you some time.”
“You going to pull it on your own?”
“Why not?” I fake it casual, but I need a mate to put this job through properly. If he won’t come in I’ll call it a night and go to bed. It just came all over me again, thinking of the old town, but I don�
�t care much now anyway. I walk to the door and he follows me out into the street.
“What was the plan?” he asks.
“Pick up a car,” I say. “Bust a store in this one horse town, then burn off out of the State. Start all over. New place. New life.”
“Gee, it would be swell,” he says. “Start all over. Clean sheet. No record hanging round your neck like a lump of concrete.”
“What about the big doll?” I ask.
“She’s a bitch,” he says. “I feel ashamed of myself wanting her.”
“Forget her,” I say. “There’s as many more bitches in the pound as ever came out of it.”
“I could forget her all right if we cleared out. Where do we pick up the tools and the torch?” He’s real keen now and I guess I have to go through with it.
“I have an acquaintance round here,” I say. “He’ll lend us anything we want.”
“Are you sure?” he asks. “This time of night?”
“Sure,” I say. “Any time at all.”
“Some pal,” he says.
“Some pal,” I agree. It’s the same chap I borrowed the clothes from. He won’t say “No” even if he wants to.
We get to the house. I go round the side and tap on his window. It is open and I can hear him breathing in his sleep, so I climb in and shake him awake. He sits up with a start and I put a hand over his mouth. “It’s only me,” I say. “Sorry it’s like late, but I have to get a torch, a jemmy and a screw-driver. You’ve still got them, I guess.”
“O.K.,” he says, gets up and fumbles around in the dark. “You might let me have them back some time.”
“Sure,” I say, “with interest. Thanks man. Have to be getting on now. Seeing you! ”
“Seeing you,” he whispers. “Good luck.”
Out in the street again we pass a few parked cars and give them a quick glance over. None of them are what I’m looking for. Not flash looking or fast enough. Outside the Salvation Army Citadel there is the sort of sleek, hot looking model I have in mind. A warlike Christian car. Like new. Good. I owe them a debt for the hymn bashing they bored me with in jail.
“Onward Christian soldiers!” I whisper.
No one about. We try the doors and find that the fools have even forgotten to lock up. It’s a gift. We jump inside. It would be too much to expect them to have left the key, but who cares? We join the wires under the dashboard and the motor kicks to life.
I let Jeff take the wheel for the first lap. I have to do the thinking for this job and am so tense I would probably start speeding too soon and have the cops on us. Christ, now I’ve made up my mind to do this job, get out of the State, I want to put it through. I didn’t care for a bit, but now I don’t want to land up in can again.
Jeff drives well, reliable. Thirty-five to forty as the city lights move backwards on either side, fifty when the lights thin out. No speed cops to worry us here. Jeff presses his foot flat and the whispers of fear fade as we flash along. Free! Grey jail forgotten. Zoom!
We talk and laugh as the road winds on, the headlights ripping a yellow path between the gums.
“Oh God, Our Father, lead us into money and deliver us from all policemen.”
“Gee, she’s a swell bomb, this,” Jeff says. “Hope we can hang on to her. We could change the number plates, buy some paint and slap her over.”
“No,” I say. “We’d better ditch her in the scrub round Southern Cross. Kalgoorlie maybe. Word’ll be in all the papers by that time. Should pick up another flash crate there — big mining executive job. Load a drum of petrol if possible. Service stations are a bad risk once the wires start buzzing.”
“Gee, you think of everything,” Jeff says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Don’t worry about this crate. Tear the guts out of her. Rip the rubber off the tyres. Who cares?”
I have a swell feeling of power now. Not a puny human weakling any more. Sort of god-like and the engine roaring out my strength at the world.
Arrow reflectors glow warnings of hidden bends. Wheels squeal and squawk around the curves. Steady, man. Even a god can die!
A glow erupts into a town. Street lights open up the roadsides. An all-night cafe and filling station flashes red neon letters and we pull to a stop. Chance to refuel while we have a quick coffee and something to eat. We crawl cramped from the seat, walk jerkily into the shop, order a snack and ask the attendant to fill the tank.
The steaming coffee and hamburgers let the tension down a bit but Jeff notices my hand shake as I light a cigarette.
“Feeling nervous?” he asks.
I say it’s good to feel a bit that way — keeps the circulation toned up for action. The cafe clock says one a.m. No time to waste, but still I dawdle over my cigarette.
“Let’s go,” Jeff urges. “What are we waiting for?”
I glance from the bright lights, into the dark unknown outside. “Godot, I guess.”
“Who did you say?”
“Nobody.” . . . “In an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone again, in the midst of nothingness.” . . . My grey mood has come over me again. All desire for action has gone from me.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s go.”
We have only about enough between us to pay for the petrol and the meal, but Jeff is cheerful and confident. He is fool enough to believe in me.
“We’re about half-way now,” he says as we walk back to the car. “Your turn to take over.”
thirteen
We start up again. I soon relax behind the wheel and begin to enjoy myself again. I have a sense of fusion with this machine and have to remind myself how I am always separate and alien from everything and everyone. No ties any more, not even to my mum. That was the hardest to break I guess, but nothing left now since the last time I was out.
Mum had come up from the wheatbelt and got herself a cheap furnished room not far out from Perth. I’d seen her there a couple of times before and she knew how it was going with me. She fussed over me at first and said how she could still make a home for me if I got a steady job, but I knew by this time. There was nothing she could do for me and precious little I could ever do for her except break any heart she had left. Last time out, she didn’t even mention it any more. Loneliness hit me in the face as she opened the door and she looked hopeless and sick, but I didn’t feel a thing. Did she expect me to thank her for bringing me into this stinking world? I guess she had a good time getting me — enough to pay my debt. .. .
“Good day, Mum. Just got out of bloody, stinking jail”
“I knew you were in, son,” she says. “Making quite a name for yourself.”
“How did you know?” I ask. “I thought they didn’t publish the juvenile names.”
“Your friend came and told me.”
“What friend?”
“That pimply-faced boy.”
“He’s an acquaintance. I don’t have any friends.” “I don’t either, for that matter,” she says. “It gets pretty lonely on my own. I came here after Mr Willy died because I thought I’d see you kids sometimes. Never see the others at all now. They’re too good for their poor old mum.”
Well, she never did that damn much for them and they never minded going away like I did that time. Jesus, she looks worn out though, and letting herself go, too. Straggly hair and sloppy old clothes. How soon can I get out of here? The stink of the old is worse than jail.
I went back to see her once more. Yes, after the car bust. Found those bags of coins in a briefcase at the back — pennies and two shilling bits.
“It’s me again, Mum. Your son.” She opens the door. “Got some pennies for you. Don’t know how much. You can change them for silver if you like.”
“Thanks, son. Always have a need for a few pennies. They do nicely for the gas.”
I take the bags from my pockets and throw them on her bed.
“Nice of you to remember me, son. There’s never much left of my pension after the rent.”
I look at her. “You
sick or something?” I ask.
“I’ve been in hospital,” she says, “but I’m better now. A priest came to see me in there and I went to confession for the first time in years.”
“Did you a lot of good, I s’pose?”
“Yes, son. I’ve felt better about things since. He was a nice priest and he said — ”
“I have to go now, Mum. Got an appointment with a chick. See you again some time, Mum.”
That means never. . . .
Now the road swings into my home town. We pull up quietly in a side street, rest and smoke a cigarette to calm our nerves. No lights and nothing moving in the dark.
“O.K.,” I say. “Better get on with it.”
An eerie sound breaks the stillness and we freeze beside the car. I hear the heavy flop of wings and glance up as the dark shape of a mopoke blurs the sky. The cold eyes of the stars compel me to look into them and fill me with a terrible doubt. Up to this everything I have done and planned to do seemed just and right, but now suddenly for some reason it seems all wrong. There is no right and wrong, I remind myself. I found that out long ago. It’s only a trick to keep the squares on top. I glance at Jeff, expecting he’s feeling the same way and will suggest calling it off. I could despise him then and it would let me out. But he has butted his cigarette and picked up the jemmy from the seat. He is too dumb to change his mind at this stage. He thinks it will be all right because I have told him so.
I’ve already decided to start on the hardware store on the comer, and I lead the way, hunching along in my cat walk. Chunky farm machinery bulks in the dark of the veranda as we make for the gates in the side street. Behind them is a yard where I remember oil and petrol drums were stored, and there are the same five-foot gates, iron frames covered with wire mesh, chained together and padlocked.
We climb up easily, but the gates rattle as we jump down into the drum-filled yard. We crouch until silence falls again, then slip through the yard to the shop. Everything is the same except the wire- netting that now encloses the back veranda. This is bad. No wire cutters. I feel around and find a small door, but it is padlocked fast. I slip the jemmy into the curve of the lock and jerk. It grates but holds firm. I try again. A few more quick jerks and the lock springs open with a snap, falls, and clangs against a piece of metal underneath. The noise seems loud enough to wake the dead and we stand hardly daring to breathe. Nothing moves, so I push the door and we ooze through to the dark veranda.
